Video games, pen&paper RPGs and other nerdery

Media Monday on Tuesday

In recent months, I have added a lot of Roleplaying blogs to my RSS reader of choice (feedly, btw), and one of my favorite German blogs is Greifenklaue. It’s a multi-purpose nerd blog with a focus on pen&paper. But really, just a little something of everything. Every Monday he participates in something called Media Monday, and I want to join in. It’s a very creative way to blog about nerdy things when the inspiration won’t strike me myself. Ahem.

As Media Monday is a German thing, I will briefly explain how it works. Every Monday, the Medienjournal blog posts posts a couple statements with gaps in it, and you fill the gaps with your own thoughts. I will translate the sentences, because I happen to blog in English. The italics part is the original sentence, the normal text is mine.

This is Media Monday #203:

One of the most frequently used exaggerations in MMO history is the term ‘WoW-killer’. The only thing that will kill this game completely will be when Blizzard officially pulls the plug on maintaining the servers. Overall, I think the playerbase will shrink further. 6.2 will probably see a lot of people re-sub, eat their way through content and then drop it again. With no expansion or even further patch news in sight, I think the numbers will go down, maybe below TBC numbers. I don’t think we’ll ever see another MMO reaching the lofty heights of WoW in its day, and with the drastic failures of triple A games like TESO and Wildstar last year, I think new MMOs are going to be a niche market again, e.g. Crowfall. There’s a Pathfinder MMO in the makings, and I fear it will be dreadful. Not that I wouldn’t love stabbing the iconic Pathfinder goblins.

Twin Peaks I thought was very artistic so that I believed I was really into David Lynch, back when the original show aired. I was a serious fangirl. I owned the soundtrack, recorded all episodes on tape, loved it. But the truth is that I am too chicken shit for David Lynch. I have never watched Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, despite being fascinated by the stories and not really being able to understand anything about them. Just reading about Blue Velvet’s plot (and the ear the protagonist finds) weirds me out. Even Dune, which I watched when I was a teenager, really grossed me out. I continue to believe that Twin Peaks’ first season was an incredibly mysterious and amazing TV show which was the most mainstream David Lynch ever was. I would rewatch the classic TV show over and over, despite the mess it turns to in its second season. I would never ever EVER watch the Twin Peaks movie again, because it’s been years and just thinking about Laura Palmer’s death scene in the train car makes me want to curl up in a ball. What a fucked up movie. I don’t know what to think about Showtime’s plans for a new season.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is something I really want to dip my toes in further, but feel like I am sitting on the fringes of something everyone loves. That’s most likely because I never go to the movies. I would love to, but my SO is not interested which makes it hard. My nerd friends at work are all very into the Marvel universe, and I don’t even know the order you watch them in. While in the US last fall I watched The Avengers on Netflix, then went home and watched The Incredible Hulk, ending up totally confused because of different actors. I know I should have watched Iron Man and maybe Thor first (I don’t really know) to get my full value out of the Avengers. It doesn’t help that Netflix Germany only has an eclectic selection of Marvel movies. I am looking forward to watching Daredevil. I really enjoyed the first episode.

The ZEITGEIST Adventure Pathrecently really wowed me because it is such an intelligent and creative Pathfinder story with an amazing scope. I would chop off my pinky toe to be able to GM this for a close group of four people regularly. The full adventure path is 13 adventures strong, and I believe issue #9 will be released soon. It’s Steampunk meets fantasy, the PCs being members of the Homeland Constabulary, defending their kingdom from outside machinations. It’s not about killing monsters and finding loot, it’s about politics, conspiracies and dealing with the effects of Industrial Revolution in a magical world. It’s outstanding. If that gets your interest, there’s a free intro pack with a full campaign guide, a player’s guide and the first adventure.

Amongst all the podcasts I wish there was a single one that held my attention. I have tried popular WoW podcasts. MMO podcasts. Pathfinder Podcasts. Know Direction probably held my attention the longest. I don’t know why that is. Usually, they’re way too long, the voices put me to sleep, I can’t follow the discussions and if I do anything else but listen to them, I tune them out. I know they’re incredibly popular and I know lots of people who love producing them, but I just can’t. How can I turn into a podcast listener, staring at the wall for 2 hours trying to listen without getting bored? I don’t know. Is it easier in German? I might try that, but I have my doubts. The same applies to audio books, btw. Booooring.

What I always hope for from movies is that there’s the one movie that turns my SO into a fan of regular movie nights at the theater. Off the top of my head I can only recall four movies that I actually watched with her in the theater: Wallace&Grommit, Inception, Bridesmaids and Brave. If there were any others, I don’t remember. I want a movie buddy. I want to be wowed again by a blockbuster. I wish!

The Big Bang Theory is positively magical and so it doesn’t bother me particularly that there’s some casual sexism involved. I wish Amy was less of a science nerd and a bit more of a gamer on the show. Why did Bernadette have to be so dumb while playing SWTOR with the boys? Ah, whatever. I don’t care, because the show makes us laugh lots, and we love it. Time simply flies by when we watch it on Netflix.